Document management is a critical process for nearly every organization. This is especially true for law firms and related organizations that originate, handle, and distribute a large number of documents. Effective management, organization and utilization of such documents are of paramount importance in law firms in order to increase efficiency and share information between multiple users (e.g., attorneys, paralegals, legal assistants, etc.).
As technology has evolved, document management in law firms is increasingly done electronically. In many cases all documents that are related to a particular legal matter are stored in electronic form in a central repository. These documents may include electronic documents (e.g., text files, spreadsheets, etc.) and electronic copies of physical hard copies (i.e., physical documents that have been scanned into a computer and, in some cases, made electronically identifiable using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) (or a similar method)). The central repository may then be made available to users, via centralized access over a network. For example, the users may securely access the documents over the network.